by Sarra Cannon
I had no idea why I’d yelled at Jordan the way I did. It was like I couldn’t help myself. The more frustrated I became, the more I just wanted to yell and scream.
And that terrified me more than anything.
I felt the darkness growing like cancer, spreading its disease through me one cell at a time. Eventually, it would consume me, and I would be trapped inside my own mind, helpless.
And if I did manage to find a way to resist it, the other half of its power would hunt me down and kill me, anyway.
All I had wanted to do was clear my friend’s name and prove that we weren’t the reckless addicts everyone thought we were. I wanted to prove that her death was not an accident or a suicide. But when I’d started down that road, I had no idea that it would lead me here.
Part of me wanted to turn around and go find Jordan. Tell him that I was sorry for being such a jerk. But after the way I’d spoken to him, he probably wouldn’t want to see me for a while.
Maybe it was better to have a break from all of this for a few hours. When I got home later tonight, I could rest and try to figure things out. I could tell him about Coach Silver later, but right now, all I wanted to do was pretend that everything was normal and okay.
I pulled into Nicole’s driveway and sat there for a minute, taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart. I pulled the mirror down from my visor and wiped the tears from my cheeks. There was nothing I could do to hide the fact that I’d been crying, but hopefully Nicole wouldn’t mention it.
I pulled myself together as best I could, grabbed my backpack, and walked to her front door. She answered before I even rang the doorbell.
“You’re late,” she said, standing there with one hand on her hip. “At least you actually showed up this time. I guess that’s an improvement. Come in.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled and stepped into her house. I hadn’t been here since last summer, but the place looked exactly the same.
She left the door wide open and turned to head up the stairs to her bedroom.
“Okay, then,” I said. Apparently, everyone was going to get pissed off at me today.
I shut the door and followed her up the steps. She was already sitting on her bed with her physics book open.
“Sorry I was late,” I said. “I got caught up with something.”
She raised an eyebrow, a sour look on her face. “Boy trouble?” she asked.
Ah, so that's what this cold shoulder was really all about. She was mad that I was spending so much time with a guy she didn’t approve of. I was so freaking tired of people judging every single choice I made. Everyone these days seemed to want to let me know just how much of a disappointment I’d become, but none of them actually seemed to care what I wanted or whether I was happy.
Jordan was the only one who’d actually listened to me, and I’d just been a complete jerk to him. This was not my best day.
“Just leave it, okay?” I asked. “Let’s get to work on this project. I just want to get it over with already.”
“Yeah, we could have done that a week ago if you’d shown up when you said you would, but I guess you’ve been too busy these days for your old friends,” she said.
“You know what? I really don’t need this today,” I said, collapsing onto the bed across from her. “I’ve been going through some really rough times lately, and I just want to have a good afternoon without someone pointing out everything I’ve done wrong for once. Can you just please accept my sincere apology and move on? I’m here now, that’s what matters, right?”
She sighed and pressed her lips together in a tight line as she stared up at me.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m just frustrated to have put this off to the last minute. But I haven’t exactly been fair to you, either. I know this has been really tough for you. I should have been more understanding. Truce?”
My shoulders relaxed.
“Truce,” I said.
Nicole smiled and leaned across to give me a hug. Her energy totally changed, as if she’d flipped some internal switch, and she bounced on the bed.
“Okay, so now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, did you hear about Troy and Lena?” she asked. “I mean, I know you said you don’t really care about him like you used to, but I thought you might want to know that they broke up this afternoon. She just texted me.”
My eyes widened. “They did? Why?”
She shook her head and stood up. “I have no idea,” she said. “But the rumor going around is that Troy feels too guilty about the way he treated you and he just doesn’t want to be with her anymore.”
She opened the mini-fridge she had stashed under her desk and pulled out two bottles of Gatorade. She handed one to me and sat back down.
“Here, you need to hydrate,” she said. “I’m sorry you were upset, and I was being dumb. Do you want to talk about whatever happened?”
I opened the drink and took a long sip.
“No, I’d really rather not,” I said, wondering if Troy had noticed something different about Lena lately. Is that why they broke up?
She shrugged. “I know you said you don’t care about him anymore, but just for the record, Troy should feel guilty as hell for what he did. It’s about time he owned up to it,” she said.
“Thank you.” I took another drink and then stared down at the bottle. “This is really sweet. I guess I haven’t had one in a long time. Does yours taste funny?”
She made a face and took a drink of hers. “Mine tastes fine,” she said. “Anyway, you want to get started on this now, or should I make some snacks?”
“Let’s just get this over with,” I said. “Then after we’re done we can go raid the kitchen in celebration.”
My eyes felt droopy all of a sudden. Tired. I still wasn’t sleeping well at night, and after crying, my body must finally be giving up. I felt like I could lay down right there and sleep for a week.
“You okay?” Nicole asked.
I rubbed my eyes and nodded. “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just been a long couple of days. I’ll be okay.”
But when I opened my eyes again, the room around me was fuzzy and blurred. I blinked, waiting for everything to go back to normal, but it never did.
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” she asked, standing up to get something off her dresser. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m…”
I couldn’t seem to finish my thought. Something was wrong. I wasn’t feeling okay at all. I felt dizzy and feverish. I placed the cold bottle against my cheek and tried to take a deep breath. Maybe I was having an anxiety attack.
Nicole walked back to the bed, but dropped her red notebook on the floor.
“Oops,” she said, laughing. “Let me get that.”
I glanced down at the notebook and blinked, trying to make sense of what I was seeing before she grabbed it and closed it up again. She laughed, but panic seized my chest. I struggled to breathe.
I knew that red notebook. It was Hailey’s journal.
Nicole sat on the bed across from me and flipped the journal open.
The inside cover was filled with strange black symbols. Symbols I was all-too-intimately familiar with.
“Why do you have that?” I asked, but my mouth wasn’t cooperating and my words came out slurred. “That’s Hailey’s.”
“Well, it was,” she said. “Her poor mother is just a mess, isn’t she? Of course, I had to visit the old bat after Hailey’s funeral, because I needed to get this journal. I couldn’t have anyone finding her entry about our little hike into the woods, now could I?”
My head buzzed with terror, and I dropped the bottle onto the floor.
“It was you?” I asked, blinking to try to clear my vision. “No. Please.”
“Who did you think it was?” she asked. “I know you and your little Native boyfriend have been getting close to the truth, but apparently not close enough.”
I shook my head. My lips and hands were numb, and I
couldn’t draw a full breath into my lungs.
“But you weren’t running with Hailey last summer,” I said, struggling to keep my eyes open. “Lena was.”
Nicole laughed, throwing her head back. “You thought Lena was strong enough to handle the power that flows through us both?” she asked. “That weakling couldn’t even handle her parents separating last year. Her dad moved out and she completely fell to pieces. If Troy hadn’t been there to comfort her, she probably would have killed herself. There’s no way she would have survived even half of my power.”
I closed my eyes and tried to steady myself. My stomach tightened as pain rolled through my body in waves.
“Lena and Hailey used to run together a lot, but when Lena’s parents started arguing, she completely broke down,” Nicole said. “And Hailey needed a new running partner. I didn’t want to go at first, but she wore me down, saying that she didn’t feel comfortable running alone in the woods. What kind of friend would I have been if I didn’t go with her? Of course, when we found that cave, Hailey was too scared to go inside, but I finally talked her into it. There was just something about it that called to me.”
I blinked and searched for my phone. I needed to try to get in touch with Jordan and let him know that it was Nicole, but I remembered that I’d left it in my bag, which was still on the floor at my feet. I could barely move my hands. There was no way I would get to the phone and text him before she grabbed it from me.
“It would have been a lot easier if I’d gone into the cave alone, but once I decided to explore it, Hailey insisted on coming with me,” she said. “A true friend until the end.”
I tried to reach for my bag, but my body simply slid off the bed and onto the floor. I had no control over my legs. I reached forward with what little strength I had left in my arms and tried to pull myself up.
Nicole plopped down on the floor beside me. “You shouldn’t fight it,” she said.
She stroked my hair, and I pulled away slightly. I was quickly losing control of my entire body, and each breath took effort and focus.
“I’m sorry you got mixed up in all of this,” Nicole said, touching my cheek. I could no longer pull away, and she knew it. “I truly am, Marayah. I’ve always liked you. I tried to get you to have a good time at that party and leave me and Hailey alone, but you just wouldn’t go away. You just had to be attached at the hip to her, just like you always were. I had no choice but to drug you both.”
I tried to scream or call out for help, but my voice was gone now, too. I struggled to open my eyes, but I could no longer make out anything but a blurry mess of color. This couldn’t be happening. I’d walked right into it all over again. I’d left Jordan, the one person who had tried to save me, and walked straight to my own death.
“Sleep now,” she said, her mouth touching my ear as she whispered. “It will all be over soon, I promise.”
I fought against it as much as I could, but it was no use. Whatever she’d drugged me with was in control now.
A single tear rolled from my eye and into the carpet before my entire world turned to darkness.
47
Surrender
My eyes fluttered open and then closed again. I wanted to fall back into that dark place and rest, but some part of me knew that if I lost consciousness again, I would never wake up.
I forced my eyes open and looked around.
The only light was the flicker of a small fire in a clearing nearby. I was in some kind of cave, but not the one we’d found earlier. I could hear the sound of a waterfall nearby. She’d taken me somewhere new. A cave Jordan didn’t know about.
I struggled for control of my body, but my hands were bound behind my back with some kind of rope tied so tightly it burned when I struggled against it.
A rag was stuffed into my mouth and another piece of fabric had been tied around my head. Sweat poured down my back. I searched for any sign of Nicole, but other than the fire, there was no indication that she was here.
Panic flared inside me, bubbling up through my throat like bile.
I was going to die.
Nicole held the second piece of the Sister’s fragmented power, and she was going to kill me to get it back. I would never get a chance to say goodbye to my parents or my sister. I would never be able to apologize to Jordan for yelling at him.
I breathed in through my nose and tried to clear the terror from my mind. I had to get it together. If she’d just dumped me here and left to go do something else, this was my only chance to escape.
I felt for the knot in the rope and tugged on the parts I could reach, but it didn’t budge. I twisted my wrists back and forth, hoping that the motion might loosen something just enough for me to get free, but she’d tied it too tightly. My legs were also bound at the ankles with a thick black rope, so there was no hope of running, either.
At least my mind had cleared enough for me to think straight. How long had I been out?
The sky beyond the mouth of the cave was pitch black except for the moonlight streaming through the trees. I wished I hadn’t told my mother I’d be home late. They wouldn’t even be looking for me until it was too late.
My death would be set up to look like another suicide or tragic accident. Just like Hailey’s.
Just outside the cave, a twig snapped, and I gasped. My body trembled in fear as I stared at the entrance to the cave.
Nicole came into view a few seconds later, and I scooted away from her, leaning my back hard against the cave wall. This couldn’t be the end. I wouldn’t let it.
“Oh, good. You’re awake,” she said, smiling. She set a large rock next to the fire. “I was really hoping you’d wake up for this. I would have done it earlier, but I had this dinner thing to go to with my parents, and I didn’t want to show up with blood all over my hands.”
She laughed. “Besides, it’s going to be so much more interesting to watch the fear in your eyes when I bash your head in.”
I shook my head and tried to speak, but the gag kept me from doing anything other than just making an unintelligible moaning sound.
She studied me for a moment and then shrugged. “Why not?” she asked.
She stepped over to me and loosed the fabric around my mouth. She pulled the rag free, and I coughed and sputtered. My mouth was dry and my throat burned.
“Better?” she asked.
“How could you?” I asked. “I was your friend. Nicole, I know you’re still in there. Please, you can still fight this. You don’t have to let this spirit control you.”
Nicole laughed and shook her head. “There’s nothing left of the Nicole you once knew,” she said. “I got rid of what was left of her a long time ago so that I could do what needed to be done.”
“Hailey,” I whispered.
“You really don’t remember anything about that night, do you?” she asked. She crouched down beside the fire and in its light, I could see that her eyes were black as night.
I shook my head. Behind my back, I quietly worked on the knots as best I could. I needed to keep her talking.
“What did you do to her?” I asked. “To Hailey. What really happened that night?”
“Ah, yes, the infamous night of the accident,” she said. “It’s been fun to watch you struggle to remember. I’ve had a front-row seat to the pathetic show as you tried to make sense of what happened. Two perfect little girls surely never would have been doing drugs like that.”
“Tell me, “I said. “At least give me that peace before you kill me.”
I kept working at the knots behind my back, and I scooted my feet closer to the still-burning ember. If I could just burn through the rope and weaken it, I could at least run. I wasn’t sure how far I would get with Nicole’s current strength and knowledge of where we were, but I had to at least try.
“The thing I told you about drugging your drinks at the party was true,” she said. “But it wasn’t Hailey who did it. It was me. We all met up at my house before the party. We did our nails, borr
owed clothes from each other’s closets, fun girl stuff, just like it was any normal night.”
I closed my eyes, trying desperately to remember.
“I didn’t want to do it. She was my friend once, but I had to get the rest of the power back,” she said. “It needed to belong to me. All of it. Hailey didn’t want it anyway. It scared her and like a scared little child, she fought against it. I told her that if she would just let it take control, she would be able to feel beyond the fear. She would be able to feel the power that now flows through us. We could have worked together to find the other idols and free our sisters. We could have had it all, but she refused. And then, of course, she met that guy who said he could help her.”
I looked up. “Who?” I asked. My palms were clammy, and the heat of the fire made my head swim.
She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Another one of these Natives who think they can defeat me,” she said. “Some Spiritwalker who could see the power flowing through us. He wanted to take it away. He wanted to convene some type of special council who could find a way to put my power back inside the idol. Obviously, I couldn’t let that happen, now could I?”
I gasped. He’d spoken to Hailey before she died? “Ethan?”
“See? I had a feeling you already knew parts of the truth,” she said. “As soon as his brother Jordan showed up, I knew I had to keep you apart, so I started that rumor about him, thinking you’d be smart enough to stay away from him. But you just couldn’t resist him, could you? You were getting too close to the truth, Marayah. You gave me no choice but to do this now.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “Where’s Ethan?”
A slow, deliberate smile stretched her lips.
“He’s near.” She glanced toward the darker part of the cave, and my stomach turned. Oh my God. Had he been here all along?
“Don’t worry, he’s not feeling any pain,” she said with a laugh. “He’s been dead now for nearly a year, poor guy.”
No. My heart ached for Jordan. If I didn’t get out of here, he would never know the truth. He would never be able to give his brother a proper burial. A warrior’s burial.